Cambodia Travel & Tourism

It is necessary to know that all of the inner circle of the Khmer Rouge have been studying in France where they got their lunatic ideas and were supported afterwards by the “Red Chinese” to implement this lunatic behavior.

Have a look at the Royal Palace and some Buddhist and Hindu temples they are not only at Angkor. The country is very interesting so you can be sure your vacation will be a pleasant one. Another very positive feature is that there plenty of people speaking English very well, actually much more compared to Thailand at the tourist spots. The school system is not so bad, naturally in the countryside its different but there are strong efforts to improve this.

Buddhism in Cambodia

The national religion is Theravada Buddhism which is also practiced in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. The monastic life here plays the principal role and the popular faith, while rudimentary and sometimes tinted with remains of ancient superstition, is based on the transmigration of the soul and the search for personal salvation through work during the course of an existence in which each action is accounted for in the regulation of the future. After death the body is carried to cremation and it ends with either the deposit of the ashes in a small funerary monument (Cedei) or their scattering on sacred ground.

There are some Christian sects trying to manipulate their firm believe in Buddha via all kind of manipulations, presents etc.. Finally the people will loose their identities, all this happen for the sake of gods which only is existent in the head of the missionaries. Just the same way as they did with the Indio in south America where they slashed the mental roots of the indigenous people who finally had a

total collapse of their culture and ended up in misery.

  
Khmer Buddha Phnom Penh National Museum.

There are much more women than men, because of the lunatic "Khmer Rough" who mainly killed the guys. Means this great country is full of pretty Asian women. There are over 2 million people living in households run by a women alone. They often have to take the responsibilities for the farm and the household managing livestock and the fisheries as well. These abilities are quite attractive to many other people

especially farmers in search of a good wife. The main problem is almost all of them in the country side are stuck by poverty.

On the other side the capital has a high density of luxury SUV's.

There is a steep difference  from the people who

have something and the others who have nothing. As it is visible at the pictures here poverty in Cambodia is widespread, actually its the normality and there is some help from various UN agencies and NGO's to help. But there is  no much real help,

this international organizations try to play politics and many of their employees from the UN using their 4 digit $ monthly salary to have a good life including luxury SUV's etc. Since this UN and NGO people are living from the donations of western taxpayers for the country this is somehow parasitic since if they scale down their SUV and other living they could spent much more money for the Cambodian people in need. From Phnom Penh to Siem Reap Want to know more about the country? use the bus. The journey Siem, Reap to the capital costs about $ 7,-, takes 5 hours and the result is to see a bit of the countryside. The buses are quite comfortable and easy match a last generation business class seat in an aircraft but TV is mounted above the driver.

The countryside looks quite poor but people improve living conditions and knowledge quite quick that includes active nationwide support of English language Which is quite different to Thailand where almost no one speak good English since the rulers try to block that kids learn English so that they don't know what's up.

Wedding Party on the road side Houses are mostly on stilts to prevent floods to come in during monsoon times and the stairs up can also function as a barrier to unwanted people. Windows are often without glass and many houses are just made from palm leaves.

Trip Angkor to Phnom Penh The Tonle Sap River sometimes flows backwards.

If one is to believe the legend, the ancient dynasties of the Khmer empire

were derived from the union of a Hindu prince, Preah Thong - who had been banished from Delhi by his father - with a “female serpent-woman”, the daughter of the Nagaraja, who was sovereign of the land. She appeared to him in radiant beauty, frolicking on a sand bank where he had come to make camp for the night. He took her as his wife, and the Nagaraja, draining the land by drinking the water that covered it, gave him the new country, called it Kambuja and built him a capital. A variation, revealed on an inscription at Mison in Champa (mid Vietnam) and reproduced in various descriptions of Cambodia, substitutes for the prince the Brahman Kaundinya, who “married the nagi Soma to accomplish the rites” and, throwing the magic lance with which he was armed, founded at the point of its landing the royal city where Somavamsa, the race of the moon, would rule. Another popular tradition, though less widespread, gives as the origin the coupling of the maharashi Kambu and the apsara Mera, whose union is symbolic of that between the two great races, solar (Suryavamsa) and lunar (Somavamsa).	Contemporary Khmer Buddha at the Capital near the Royal Palace
This survives particularly in the word Kambuja - son of Kambu - from where derives the name “Cambodian” by which we now call the present descendants of the ancient Khmer. Whichever version one takes, the mythical implication is undeniable and the truth remains - that the Khmer people are born of a joining of two distinct elements; Indian and Khmer. They are not, as some would believe, just people of purely Indian or Hindu origin who had come, following migration, to settle in a region devoid of any inhabitants, or where the indigenous race had been eliminated by mass deportation. Several south east Asian countries such as Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Thailand got their alphabets, religion and plenty of cultural elements from India over hundreds of Ancient Khmer Buddha
years. This is somehow strange since the peoples of the mentioned countries migrated definitely from China and not from India but it looks as if this cultural parameter where carried in by the spreading of Buddhism.

Angkor was established more than thousand years ago

Angkor Wat main gate

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat Apsara Dancer

Angkor Wat Hindu God

Angkor Wat inside

ruling an area which including present day Cambodia, Cochin China and parts of Siam and Laos, they were in fact a mixture - from an ethnological rather than a linguistic point of view - of people from lower Burma and  various barbarous people from the animistic chain, themselves in turn quite probably deriving from Negroid and Indonesian roots. The Indian contribution apparently resulted from a natural expansion towards the east for commercial, civil and religious reasons rather than for any brutal political motivation. Moreover, with the fall of the Khmer empire - came a total decline and abandonment of the capital, but, mysteriously, not the entire extinction of the race. With a little help from France and a clear understanding of the glory of their past.

Siam

At Angkor Thom Angkor Thom At Angkor Cambodia joining the crowd Cambodia at Angkor and elsewhere experienced the up and downs in history, practically every country went through this disaster time, many not only once. Characteristics and traditions, religion can’t be taken off. Even catastrophes such as volcanic eruptions, earthquake, flood or whatever are only a “intermezzo” with creative people like the Khmer are without doubt things get to normal after a while, even when this is a long while. The main problem at the time probably was that catastrophes bring epidemics and this was difficult to handle, means many people probably died. Road to Angkor Thom Around Angkor Part of Angkor Irrigation System Ta Prohm Temple - muscular embrace of vast tree-root systems, photo by W. Poerner Temple raider The Khmer Buddha's are by now on their way to the antique shops of Bangkok, or the auction houses of the West. They are bound ultimately for secret collections of Angkorian art in an illicit and thriving trade that is consigning one of the wonders of the world to a slow death. The temples of Angkor were built between the 9th and 14th centuries, when Khmer civilization was at its height and the empire stretched north to Yunnan in China and from Vietnam westwards to the Bay of Bengal. Unparalleled in south-east Asia, they are a living testament to the extraordinary creativity of the Khmer. Similar archeological sites are at Myanmar Bagan, at Sukhothai and Ayutthaya in Thailand and Borobudur in Indonesia. Nightlife at Phnom Penh There is some nightlife at Phnom Penh At the capital bars and restaurants are along Sisowath Quay and in the side streets. Even some rather small nightclubs are around with pretty girls, but the nightclubs are no not very stylish at all. Considering the recent past it's probably the best which can be in this time, there is continuous improvement and as we know, Rome was also not built in one day. Nightlife at Koh Kong Siem Reap at night Sihanoukville beach at night Today Angkor antiquities can be seen at Bangkok's River City complex, Singapore's Tanglin shopping center and around London's auction houses is necessary to mention that it is not possible to get smuggled items into Singapore and even in the shops there without the government just close the eyes to this unlawful practice. The Singaporean government fine you when you have a chewing gum or wont flush the toilet at a public toilet, but they don't care when a neighboring country is looted and the bounty is sold in the Singapore shopping mall, who makes the money? There are even persistent rumors of the existence of a catalogue containing detailed photographs of Angkor Cambodia statues and bas-relief, allowing wealthy Westerners to order specific items still in-situ. And three countries in the world still allow antiquities to be purchased without documentation: Australia, Japan and Switzerland. On the black market, a life-sized Buddha from Angkor, can fetch around $250,000 and this the reason why the looting continues. The exorbitant prices that Khmer art fetches on the international market. "The country remains very poor. The army is very poor," and when everyone is extremely poor its rather normal to try to get some money in the pocket, that's human nature. But the overwhelming sentiment is one of sadness at the irreparable damage by tomb raider and other Cambodians have been driven by poverty and the greed of foreigners to inflict on their own heritage. Khmer Art Cambodia and China Everyone should have a look into Cambodia dance there are dinner shows at the major tourism spots, with great dance performances and music. To see this slow motion dancing tells something about the people.